n will be
simple; but if not--you should be prepared, Mr. McRae."

"There's nothing," said Roderick. "Nothing."

Everything in the world was slipping from him. The props of life had
given way one by one, and now perhaps life itself was going. He lay
there on the small cot-bed, watching the nurse and orderly hurry to and
fro, and looked squarely at the situation. It was desperate. Always
he had taken hold of difficulties and wrenched them out of his path and
gone proudly on his way. But here he was helpless. For the first time
in his strong, successful youth he realised that which his father had
striven all his years to teach him, man's utter impotence before God.
He was bound hand and foot, helpless, just as the door of success had
flung open at his touch. He had paddled out bravely into the open sea
of life after the rainbow gold, only to find it vanish and leave him
lost in a world of mists and shadows. He remembered Dr. Leslie's
words: "If His love cannot draw us into the way, it meets us on the
Damascus road and blinds us with its light."

He lay there for what seemed an interminable time. He was clinging to
one faint hope. Lawyer Ed would surely answer his telegram. But the
nurse returned with the word that there had been no message, and that
the doctors were preparing. He was to go down to the operating room in
ten minutes.

It seemed as if with that word the last feeble support gave way, and
then Roderick McRae's soul went down to the black brink of despair. He
was utterly alone, without help or friend. Everything, his success,
his health, his father, his love, had been snatched from him in one
moment.

There was even no God for him. He had been so long dependent entirely
upon himself, that God had become a meaningless word. And now, if God
were real, His cruel Hand was behind that fearful black mist that was
closing about him shutting him off from hope. He lay like a log,
staring at the white ceiling of the little hospital room. The nurse
and the orderly were bidding him brace up and were shaking their heads
over him. He paid no more attention to them than to the strong odour
of drugs or the soft click-click of heels on the hardwood floor of the
corridor. Some subtle trick of memory had taken him back to the one
other time of despair in his experience. He was back again in that
night, years ago, when he was lost on the lake, drifting away in the
darkness to unknown terrors; and just a